Battle Rifles Need a damage buff.

It's my opinion that Battle Rifles need a damage buff as I do not believe they are properly advantaged at medium ranges as they are supposed to be. I've made this judgement after using the Battle Rifle for quite some time and currently have over 180 kills with it.

The idea behind the Battle Rifle is good in theory, but in practice it doesn't pan on. Good shots with Carbines or LMG's can easily kill you in about 1 second flat and have a much higher "forgiveness" for bad aim due to putting out a much higher accurate bullet count. Furthermore, if you are not achieving head shots a Battle Rifle will take 5 shots at range to kill someone, 6 with nanoweave involved, 7 shots with maxed nano-weave. For a relatively slow firing (if accurate) weapon with high recoil intended to be strong at mid-range this is unacceptable.

Suggested changes:

Damage increased from 250/200 close/long range to 300/250 close/long range.
Vertical Recoil Reduced 10%
Muzzle Velocity increased from 500 to 550.



This won't change the close range performance much. The bullets to kill and thus the TTK remains the same on everyone except those in early nano-weave and infiltrators likely rocking SMG's. It'll help the long range fights a good bit though. 4 bullets is better than 5 and nobody takes more than 5 bullets (instead of being up to 7!!).

Vertical recoil reduction helps with follow-up shots, which you'll need, and puts the recoil at the same value with high velocity ammo equipped. Muzzle velocity inceased is for increased performance vs moving targets at ranged. This thing is meant to shoot at moving targets, 500 is SLOW.

I'm hoping with these changes Battle Rifle can at least find a niche somewhere between the automatic weapons and sniper rifles. Currently it's better to just bring your carbine or LMG. Especially when you can shoot grenades. This likely won't change that but at least it'll be MORE competitive.

Agreed. Scout rifles need a buff too.

I'll +1 this

Agreed. There is no reason to use a battle rifle at the moment other than to torture yourself when you run out of other weapons to earn Auraxium medals with.

BRs and SRs are still very viable options. The problem with them is they're not versatile. They excel in specific areas.

The BR allows HA and engis to reach farther targets at the cost of being weak in closer ranges. I like my Warden; however, it's just not the best option the vast majority of the time. I use it so rarely.

Buffs to dmg and recoil would definately make these guns more worthwhile. They don't need big buff, though. Just enough.

The automatic SR is really good, atm. I use my Stalker quite a bit. It could use a small buff to recoil... and perhaps increase it's mag size to 26. 30 would be nice, but might be too much. The gun's reload is quite fast.

The Shadow is a gun a really like, as well, yet hardly use. I'm more fond of my Impetus and Longshot when it comes to singshot rifles. I might suggest just lowering the recoil and buffing the hipfire accuracy to make this gun's role more unique. It's dmg is good and it's velocity is relatively slow. Buffing those areas would make it too much like the other gun options.

Yeah I was careful not to go overboard with the damage, but 250 was the long range damage needed to make any real difference. Anything lesser than that would be negligible. That determined the close Range damage of 300 .

Muzzle velocity should be as high as 700, but i don't think it needs any other buffs.

The only time they haven't overbuffed something is the BR's and SR's.

Shotgun slugs are better.

Eidolon + Lancer is the perfect combination for a rock. Also you can use the Eidolon to aim targets for the Lancer (of course only if you choose the swingless 4x scope).

agreed, I really like the style of battle rifles but the damage is a joke.

I strongly agree that battle rifles could use a buff. I have about 750 kills with mine, and it is slow going. It is supposed to have an edge at long range, but I found that I was getting out-gunned by LMGs and the NS SMG at medium to long ranges, while sacrificing almost all my close range ability while using a 3.4x, compensator, and foregrip. The issue I seem to have, is that it does not properly reward accuracy, because you need to slow down your rate of fire and either crouch or be stationary to make sure your shot hits while an LMG will just take a few short bursts while on the move, and the volume of fire more than makes up for the degraded accuracy.

Personally, I do much better with the warden by giving it a 2x reflex, laser sight, and no compensator/HVA and using it in close range, and just firing as fast as I can since fire rate trumps almost everything else.

With its ROF a damage buff would be too much. It'd take just two headshots to kill.

I'm VS and I think the battle rifle is awesome. OF course...we don't got bullet drop.

All they need is a velocity buff.

You don't need to fire the weapon as you descibed, nor should you. The weapon is accurate even while strafing at long range, and its ROF makes up for any bad shots. It greatly rewards accuracy, i think you meant to say SOE doesn't reward accuracy though. If you get in a head shot they will go down real real fast.

The thing is, again, only the VS have an accurate battle rifle worth using. All I can do is tell you guys how much I love using it.

They definitely could use a buff, and maybe some faction specificity for the TR and NC.
Damage would be nice, as would COF bloom. If you need to make a bunch of headshots in a row, having the thing bounce all over the place makes that pretty difficult, since the target's going to move after the first. Slug shotguns work better at this since at medium range it's only ~2-3 headshots to kill and the COF expansion doesn't feel as bad, which is kind of silly.

Velocity and RoF buff and BRs woulda actually be damn good I think. Velocity to 600 and RoF to atleast that of pistols at 351.

Apologies but did you just combine ROF and headshots on an extremely high recoil weapon? I'm sorry, but that's a ludicrous combination for this weapon. Also, you are requiring 2 headshots, which would require quite the marksman at medium or longer ranges on anything but a stationary target, while CQC weapons would still eat you alive.

You probably never used this gun. Its got very low recoil for a semi automatic weapon. I can put down two headshots in under a second, no prob. I can put in three typically before a guy can react.

Its possible you didn't use the gun after they buffed its recoil considerably.

If BR:s are buffed then you have sniper rifle better than many sr are.
Biggest problem is that ar:s and lmg;s are made too versatile already.

I used my thanatos with slugs as a BR, its usually a 2 head shot kill, all the way to auraxium. The BR has substantially better cof and velocity, he is right it would be op-as long as you are skilled enough to use it.